


a common misconception

by casualbird



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, Experimental Style, Gen, Worldbuilding, dragons bayBEE!!!!!, spoilers allllllll about seteth and flayn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-22 11:47:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22915702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casualbird/pseuds/casualbird
Summary: On dragons' hoards, which are not always like you'd think.
Relationships: Flayn & Seteth (Fire Emblem), Seteth/Seteth's Wife (Fire Emblem)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 96





	a common misconception

**Author's Note:**

> i think this might deviate from the canon timeline but i absolutely do not care.

That the dragon-folk of eons past kept grand troves of lavish treasures--jeweled crowns, enchanted swords, chambers piled with enough gold coins to drown cat-burgling fools--is not untrue. Still, as is the wont of stereotypes, it is tawdry and reductive, falling short of capturing the whole scope of the culture.

Certainly, some hoards were... opulent, as such. Some still are: it can be said that the whole of Garreg Mach is a hoard, with all its holy artifacts, gilded chalices, entombed saints. Even the throne of the Goddess sits among its treasures, under the jealous, zealous claws of the archbishop. Her cache is as antique, as grandiose, as imposing as the Immaculate One herself, and it is as a jewel in her crown.

Still. Such an enormous, rich hoard... it is as anomalous as a mansion, a grand estate. Take, for example, Indech--his hoard is not half the size of his sister's, and not nearly so ostentatious. It is a point of pride, certainly, but there is not a single gem, not a fleck of gold leaf to adorn it. It is, instead, all martial, a cold carbon-steel collection squirreled away in the damp caves delving under Lake Teutates. His brother Macuil's is similar--a library beneath the sands of Sreng, replete with papyri, scrolls, grimoires, stacked teetering along the cramped corridors of his sanctum.

And Cethleann, still only a child, keeps very few items of real value. Well--'real' value, something a plundering adventurer might want, a forgotten treasure to sell, or to fan the flaming hubris of some mortal king who doesn't know how small he is. Fish bones, she keeps, and glimmering pebbles, shells, soft-edged shards of sea glass. Ribbons, yellowed lace handkerchiefs, well-loved dolls.

It's not so vast as the stories say, either--Cethleann's hoard stuffs a closet, jammed haphazard onto its shelves. Some overspill has migrated under her bed, and every so often her father bids her to tidy it up.

On the subject--Cichol's hoard is the most modest of them all, barely filling the battered old trunk at the foot of his bed. It is also the neatest-kept. (It is possible that in the past there lived a fussier dragon-child than he, but certainly not anymore.) Scrupulously dusted, expertly preserved, it lies in layers like a cliffside, in strata of sentimental sediment. 

At the bottom, crumbling clay tablets, humming with the magic that holds them together. A torc of beaten bronze that he recalls reaching for with small soft hands when it adorned his mother's neck. Tiny glass tiles, still streaked with residue of the cement that once held them fast in a mosaic whose image even he barely recalls.

And then steel bracers, still hairline-scratched with the swords of traitor armies. Relics from this era are scarce, even to Cichol, but he keeps what's left of the armor that bore him through it, tattered missives from his siblings. The trunk is--really, by quantity alone, primarily concerned with the archiving of documents, and these are the oldest.

Historic, these things. The same as one might find in any archive, the collection of some scholar playing at hoarding themself, trotted out for literati party tricks.

Less so as one goes up, and desperation bleeds from the words in tandem. The letters above are much more softly dire, kept with their kiss-sealed envelopes, the flakes of pressed flowers long gone. Armor gentles, gives way to prayer shawls in hushed earth tones, and when they are brought out, cherished--with effort, through the must, Cichol can still catch the ghost of her scent, like ocean, tea. He keeps the deck of cards she loved, the face cards portraits of the saints. His own likeness adorns the king of spades, so granite-severe that it never failed to make her lose breath laughing.

He can't store away that sound, can't wrap her darling snort in silk, roll it up and slip it through her cut wedding ring, but he keeps it all the same.

Just the way he keeps her little book, diary and devotional and grimoire at once, bound in feathering leather, spilling still with loose notepapers, recipe cards. Keeps all the fingerprints she left on it.

Keeps the patches she sewed into the faded muslin swaddling blanket, her uneven stitches, the tiny stain among a thousand childhood stains from where she pricked her finger. The rest are Cethleann, who dragged this blanket through the sand, who chewed its edges until they were pockmarked with her crooked needle teeth.

One of those teeth stays with it, in a wooden box once meant for tea, labeled with the date in a hand that shook with progress, with the notion that babies don't stay. To that point, the slate she used to learn her letters, her first iridescent shed scale. The rusted husk of the hook she used to catch her first fish.

Sheaves on sheaves of paper, wrapped tidily in cloth, all past their natural life, all brittle. All a whirl of shape and color, wax and charcoal smears, wobbly signatures. Family portraits, labels peppered with backward letters, yellow suns in top left corners. Dragons crowd the skies, uneven fish school beneath squiggled waterlines, princesses frolic on land. A popular subject is the cat they had, grey and ornery, devoted only to Cethleann, and growth shows in the weight of the lines, her eventual grasp on the spelling of his name. 

Stories, too, first dictated and then written in Cethleann's own hand, with drawings in the margins like illuminated manuscripts. Fairy tales, mainly, of girls cut loose, bounding wild on great adventures, rescuing the princes, milkmaids, dragon-folk with whom they'd have their happy ever afters. They show stains as she graduates to ink, and so does the lace-edged pinafore that cushions them, the one she wore when she first sang with the children's choir. Its hem frays, testament to her errant verve, how in the joyous company of a passel of girls she refused to stand still, forgot the words to the hymn, sang beautifully nonetheless.

The barrette she wore to the funeral, that held her hair from her eyes as she wept, that she pressed into Cichol's hand days later, wailing that she could never look at it again.

The sign, reading "Do Not Disturb" in halting cursive, that she pinned to her bedroom door for her long sleep. The hug she gave him when first she woke is intangible, but Cichol counts it part of his hoard nonetheless.

His collection rounds out, then, with recent memorabilia--a forgotten book she handed him rather than decide what to do with as they packed for Garreg Mach, a friendship bracelet she made for him when his new job frazzled him within an inch of his life. A handbill drawn up for the fishing tourney, the recipe for her favorite dish scribbled on the back. Her first report card from the Officer's Academy, calling her eager, attentive, bright.

And then--the lid of the trunk, the latches that seal it, the simple padlock that holds it fast. The tiny key, glinting brass, on a chain trailing under Cichol's shirt. This is all. No ostentation, no holy grail. Not even much history, really.

There is no other way he'd have it.

**Author's Note:**

> my goodness, i hope y'all liked this!! it's so different from what i usually write, but the idea hit me hard (thanks, red!) and i had to get it out of me sharpish.
> 
> tell me what you thought, and if you're 18+ you're welcome to hang out with me on [twitter!!](https://twitter.com/bird_scribbles)
> 
> oh, and a huge shout-out to discord pals for looking over this for me!


End file.
